More Human than Human

Jus­ti­fied anger near­ly got me killed last night.

I was rid­ing my bicy­cle home from work, with all my lights and blink­ers oper­at­ing. I (usu­al­ly) obey traf­fic laws when I ride, so I stopped for a red light at Mar­ket and Van Ness. There was a cop direct­ing traf­fic as well as the light. I kept my eye on the cop when the light changed, expect­ing him to move one of his hands to indi­cate that we should go or not. He did­n’t, but four lanes of traf­fic start­ed mov­ing any­way, so I start­ed off, a lit­tle slow because I have toe­clips and straps, and those are a sucky way to affix one’s feet to pedals.

A BMW honked at me. Not a friend­ly toot, but a lean on the horn as he floored his gas ped­al going past. Appa­rant­ly he did­n’t like being in the lane behind some­one on a bicy­cle who gave a hoot what the traf­fic cop was instruct­ing traf­fic to do.

OK, I’ll back up a lit­tle. I’d already been rid­ing a cou­ple miles, not hard, but Van Ness at rush hour can be a lit­tle hec­tic. I’d been rid­ing pret­ty aggres­sive­ly, which I think is the only way to ride in traf­fic. I don’t believe in hid­ing from cars, I trust that if they know where I am that they won’t go out of their way to get me. So I take up lanes and crap like that. But I’m always pret­ty well aware of what’s around me and I don’t like to let cars get too close. I’m not reck­less, but I do get out there in the road and make myself seen.

So I had Rob Zom­bie run­ning through my head. I was in that zone. Just pow­er­ing my way through traf­fic like a badass or some­thing. Feel­ing supe­ri­or and get­ting off on surf­ing through the dan­ger of unpre­dictable drivers.

Then this guy in the BMW leans on his horn and pow­ers past me in my lane. Total­ly ille­gal, of course, but more than that it was just disrespect.

Like who do you think I am, anyhow?

So of course this guy was in the wrong. And of course I used the quadri­ceps God gave me to show him that I could out­pace his Bim­mer, at least in traf­fic. I passed him on the right and cut him off, and slowed down just to show him who the boss is: ME.

Well, I was slow­ing down, but the car in front of me was slow­ing down even more. So self-preser­va­tion dic­tat­ed that I had made my point and that I should move on. I swerved to the right and passed the car in front of me on the right.

Just as he made a hair­pin right hand turn onto 12^th street with­out signalling.

There’s only so hard you can turn a bike that’s mov­ing at a high rate of speed. You have to lean in at just the right amount. Too much and the bike slides out from under you. Not enough and you fall over in the direc­tion you were trav­el­ing before you start­ed the turn. I turned it hard to the right, but not only was there a big Amer­i­can car on my left, but a curb on my right. The more I turned, the clos­er the car got to the curb. I saw my pas­sage­way get nar­row­er and nar­row­er as my bal­ance grew more and more tenuous.

I shout­ed a sin­gle word, describ­ing some­thing I’d rather be doing instead of get­ting run over by a car. I think the dri­ver must have heard me, because the gap widened and the car slowed. I shot out ahead and cut left onto 12^th and back onto Mission.

I’ve always found a bit of irony in that line “More human than human,” which was the mot­to of the Tyrell Cor­po­ra­tion in the film Blade Run­ner. The fact that I’d just had the White Zom­bie song run­ning through my head under­scored this sense. What does it mean to be human? To be fal­li­ble, to be vul­ner­a­ble. Well as I sped down Mis­sion after that close call, I was cer­tain­ly feel­ing more human than human. More vul­ner­a­ble, more capa­ble of error than I nor­mal­ly do. And the syn­er­gy of my error lead­ing to such vis­cer­al proof of my vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty made for a very poignant moment.

I remem­ber Ben telling me about some writ­ers on LJ writ­ing with forced and tor­tured prose. No doubt using the words “syn­er­gy”, “vis­cer­al”, and “poignant” in the same sen­tence I’ve just shot to the top of the tor­tured prose list. Ugh.

Five min­utes after I got off the bike at 23^rd and Capp (my one stop before going the rest of the way home) I was still shak­ing. The adren­a­line seemed to have sat­u­rat­ed my entire body.

Still, It was very clear to me that this was just proof that I can’t han­dle jus­ti­fied anger. The guy in the BMW was an ass­hole, and he defied my will. That made me angry and I went to defy his will. The trou­ble is, when I’m defy­ing the will of a 3500 pound heap of met­al, glass, and com­bustible flu­ids, I’m out and out ask­ing God to squash me.

Inter­est­ing­ly, although the guy who turned right did­n’t use his turn sig­nal, he did­n’t piss me off as much as the guy that honked at me. The guy that honked at me made me mad because he honked at me. My anger was jus­ti­fied by the fact that he did some­thing ille­gal. I was not mad because he did some­thing ille­gal, I felt jus­ti­fied in chas­ing him down. The guy who turned with­out sig­nal­ing just scared me. My pride did­n’t come into play at all, so the fact that he did some­thing ille­gal was a tee­ny minor point. I’m also grate­ful that he slowed and let me through. But it’s not so easy for me to get self-right­eous about it when I see how selec­tive I am about who I’ll be mad at.